POLICE STATE, USA

Photo: Checkpoint cops point guns at motorists

Innocent Americans in cross-hairs during police manhunts

Four law-enforcement officers were wounded Friday in a suburb of Sacramento, Calif., during an attempt to take a wanted gang member into custody.

The shooting occurred in Roseville, a suburb about 20 miles northeast of the state capital.

Helicopters circled overhead and armored vehicles and other police cars flocked to the area following an initial report that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent had been shot.

A sporadic gun battle lasted into the night and the commotion snarled traffic for hours. Police responded by setting up a checkpoint and pointing guns at motorists, as this Associated Press photo shows.

The photo, (credited to AP Photo/The Sacramento Bee, Randall Benton) is captioned, “A California Highway Patrol officer and another emergency responder stop a vehicle at a checkpoint near the neighborhood where a federal immigration officer was shot and three local police officers were wounded during a violent confrontation with a suspect in the Sacramento suburb of Roseville on Friday, Oct. 25, 2013.”

The suspect, 32-year-old gang member Samuel Nathan Duran, eventually surrendered after leaving a nearby house in which he had been holed up.

Former U.S. Rep. and presidential candidate Ron Paul later observed the manhunt was more frightening than the attack itself, saying it resembled “scenes from a military coup in a far off Banana Republic.”

Similarly, during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner, the ex-LAPD officer whose killing rampage that left four people dead and three others wounded, police shot and injured two innocent women delivering newspapers in a truck that “resembled” Dorner’s vehicle.

“I feel scared to go out at night. I am scared that I will get shot by police,” victim Margie Carranza later told NBC4.

Eight LAPD officers fired allegedly more than 100 bullets at Carranza and her mother.

About two blocks away and 25 minutes after the mother-daughter pair was shot, officers opened fire on David Perdue’s black Honda Ridgeline.

Police fired at least three bullets at Perdue’s truck before ordering him out and detaining him for an hour, according to documents filed in federal court in Los Angeles July 8.